Ienai
by joudama
Summary: For you, some things cannot be spoken; cannot be healed. Now with expanded author's notes!
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Ienai**  
Author:** joudama**  
Fandom:** Metal Gear Solid**  
Rating:** PG**  
Word count:** 900-ish  
**Summary: **For you, some things cannot be spoken; cannot be healed.  
**Song Prompt****:** Birdcage - Gackt  
**A/N: **Written for fictunes on insanejournal, with "Birdcage" by Gackt as the song prompt. (And no, it's not song fic; the "prompts" are just there for fic inspiration, not a base.)

The title, "Ienai," is Japanese, and I picked it for three reasons:

1. Otacon (Hal Emmerich) is a giant anime otaku; you _know_ that man knows Japanese.  
2. The line in "Birdcage" I genked the title from is 「悲しみは癒えない」 [kanashimi wa ienai]--"my loneliness can't be healed."  
3. In Japanese, the words for "can't be healed," 「癒えない」, and "can't be spoken," 「言えない」, are _homonyms_--the kanji are different, but they're pronounced the same, "ienai."

This takes place after MGS2 and assumes you know Otacon's terrible, awful backstory. ;_;

--

"How old were you?"

Snake blurts the question out suddenly, almost as if he didn't mean for it to come out, as if he had tried not to, but it had finally broken free.

You don't have to ask what Snake is talking about. You know. And you look away, avoid eye contact. It's easier that way. This isn't a conversation you wanted to have, ever, with anyone...let alone Snake.

"Around thirteen or fourteen," you say, and the words are strange, somehow, twisting in your mouth. You don't want to elaborate. How old were you when everything started? How old when your father found out and killed himself? Or when--

Something is broken inside, you realize. You knew you were broken, but...you hadn't expected the broken edges to be so jagged, to cut and hurt you even more inside. You had thought time had blunted everything, but it hasn't. Maybe time had made you numb, gave you callouses inside over the worst parts, but now it feels like something cutting into freshly-healed wounds, tearing everything back open again.

"Oh," is all Snake says, and, for all it feels like a betrayal, you are grateful for that.

--

"It, uh...it...wasn't your fault," Snake says out of nowhere. He sounds uncomfortable, but like he feels like he has to say something.

You don't turn around, but your fingers freeze over your keyboard and you go still. "What's not my fault, Snake?" you say, your voice somehow calm for all you know it's a facade, and you _don't turn around_.

You can see Snake's reflection in your monitor. It's not good enough to show you details, but you can see how stiff Snake is, the discomfort in his posture. Snake is not a man who hesitates, but you see him hesitating now, and all you can think to that is "_Good_."

That, and a strange feeling you can't put words to, some feeling that has set your stomach to clinching. Normally, it would make you want to double over, but it is oddly separate from you, and makes something in you stiffen, that makes you wary and wanting to lash out to protect yourself.

You can see Snake, and you know Snake can see you, reflected imperfectly through the screen. But the light from the monitor reflects off of your glasses, making a mirror; your eyes are invisible. Snake's eyes are better, but they cannot see yours, and your computer is a shield.

"None of it," Snake says after a while, and though it's indistinct, reflected through the monitor, you can see him frown, search for words.

You don't say anything, and after a long moment, you choose to begin to type again rather than speak, and it is a painful relief when Snake's shoulders slump and he walks away--a relief because you don't want to talk or think about this and he has left you _alone_; painful because, with all of these things trapped inside you and the unspoken shards tearing you apart, he has left you _alone_.

Your computer is your shield, and your sanctuary, and your comfort.

And to escape, you slide further into it; into code, into cracks, into the breaches, into the unseen places in the background where you seek to live your life.

Your computer is your shield, and your sanctuary.

It is your comfort.

And your cage.

--

Snake puts his hand on your shoulder. You are tired; your eyes hurt, your wrists and fingers feel cramped, and the coffee ran out long ago. You look up at him; he is out of focus because you pushed your glasses up a moment ago to rub your eyes. He is only a blur, and you wonder what he wants.

"Hmm?" you say, and smile faintly as your glasses slip back into place, still half-thinking about reasons why your code isn't compiling and grateful for the break.

"I'm sorry," he says. "About E.E. And...and all the rest of it. I'm...sorry."

You are still looking at him. You didn't expect this; it is out of the blue and seeing Snake full on, the way his lips are tight and how he is _trying_, that he has _been_ trying and he is _still _trying, that is when something protective inside you shatters; when you realize that for once, there is someone who in some way cares for you; that you are not truly _alone_.

The weight of it and the weight of the past is too much; the weight of memories of things that should never have been and memories of two lonely children playing together and playing at making a home because they had no one else, and the realization that the past has repeated itself; that once again you are and have been _playing_ at something, playing at a hero, playing at the _imitation_ of the real, playing at the _imitation_ of a 'home,' once again reaching out to someone as lonely as yourself..and that he, fumbling and uncertain, is and has been _reaching back_, reaching out _to you_, _trying, _for all it seems to be against his nature and a struggle, _trying_--

The weight of it is more than you can bear.

And that is why, without a word, you bury your face in your hand to grant you some small form of protection, some small form of _distance_ from everything that has burst through to the surface but has no other outlet, and begin to cry.

His hand stays on your shoulder, and the weight of it is a comfort.

And a cage.

--


	2. Codec from jou

(This was originally going to be included in the author's notes, then I decided they were too long. These are supplementary author's notes; you don't need to read them.)

**Codec from jou (freq. 198.42):** This fic was originally in third person, but in a very odd style--now that I'm thinking about it, I'm realizing I unconsciously mimicked styles from Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors and a writer who writes postmodern quasi-SF; the style he used for _Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World _and the minimalist one for the character Fuka Eri in _1Q84_.

One of the major themes in Murakami's work is how people are no longer able to connect, and the "End of the World" sections of _Hard-Boiled Wonderland_ (and the way Fuka Eri is done in _1Q84_) are written in a style that's almost designed to both connect you to the protagonist and keep you from connecting--it's been a couple of years since I read _Hard-Boiled Wonderland_, so I really can't describe it much better than that, and reading the sections with Fuka Eri in _1Q84_ always leaves me sort of waaaaaaugh and off-balanced. I think unconsciously tried to imitate that separate-feeling style because there was a feeling of frozen time throughout some of the sections of _Hard-Boiled Wonderland_ and _that_ was the feel I wanted for this. I wanted that separate-but-not, still-life moment in time feeling, and I had Murakami on the brain since I'm reading _1Q84_ now (seriously, when it gets translated into English, go get it), especially in regards to MGS thanks to an online essay I read. ^^;; So it started out _very_ much with the Murakami base to it.

One thing I like about MGS is how meta and postmodern it is, so I was working with the idea in my head of trying to write the surreal as the hyper-real, which is how MGS operates (although it could be argued that the hyper-real is more _post_-postmodernism; think Neil Gaiman). I've written in a somewhat postmodern style before--Ein Sof and Something Delicate are so postmodern they hurt--but MGS was a chance to write it intentionally and try to really play with it. And as I was walking to the post office and thinking about a post I wanted to make about writing the surreal in MGS, something hit me.

MGS loves to remind you, constantly, that you are in a video game. MGS2 could arguably be described as a game-within-a-game: you are playing a character who is playing a game but doesn't realize it, and who doesn't realize he is only a game character, in more ways than one. Instructions on using the controls are given as if it's normal, and Snake jokingly refers to having an infinite ammo headband, which is an item you get if you do the Meryl ending of MGS1 (he also starts out the game with the stealth gear from the Otacon ending, meaning it's an extra touch of the surreal). Since the game always hints that you are just playing a game, I decided to rewrite this fic...in second person. It still has that Murakami-esque base, but I reworked things, just a bit, to try and make it flow with the postmodernism of the MGS game world and gaming in general. It is a game and you are the player; the character is _you_.

(And for extra fun, jumping back on the postmodern literary train: in postmodernism, the chaos of an existential crisis/internal conflict is, unlike in modernism (think TS Eliot, Hemingway, and Joyce), considered insurmountable--you can't _stop_ it, so the only thing to do is _play_ within that chaos.)

I've never written second person before so, uh, heh, it's an experiment? And what fandom better to experiment with the surreal than MGS! XD After all, there was a _reason_ why the Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura has been pushing _Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World_ on Hideo Kojima ever since MGS2 came out. (So, in short: if y'all aren't reading Murakami..._you should be_. 3 )

This isn't to say that "Birdcage" didn't influence this, either--it did. Big time. I was listening to it almost the whole time I wrote it. Aside from feel, the structure of the song, with it's three distinct sections and the last section being a combination of the first two, definitely had an impact, and I expanded sections of the fic (it was originally only about 600 words; now it's over 900) to tie it in to the song.

So, to sum up everything: _man_, I am ever a _nerd_. ^^;;;;

--


End file.
